CCWH: Coal, Steam and the Industrial Revolution Prezi

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Transcript of CCWH: Coal, Steam and the Industrial Revolution Prezi

Coal, Steam, and the Industrial Revolution Crash Course: World History #32 The British Textile Industry The Flying Shuttle(John Kay 1733) Sub-Thesis #1 Inventions like the Spinning Jenny and waterframe Question: Steam engines were also used to clear water out of mines Soon mechanized using water power, until the steam engine came along The innovations of the Industrial Revolution were intimately interconnected. More water out of mines meant more coal to power steam engines, which led up to James Watt's fancy upgraded steam engine, which was used for much more, such as... Which made the flying shuttles really fly in huge cotton mills (mass production), but following along the lines of these steam engines... The Industrial Revolution was an increase in production brought about by the use of machines and characterized by the use of new energy sources that began around 1750 in Europe, especially Britain. Which increased speed of weaving, and created more demand for yarn. (Used in that yarn production) Railroads, steamboats, ever-more effiecient steam mills And a bunch of factors that came together to create more yarn that could be spun and bleached faster and cheaper than ever before (which would eventually lead to Crash Course Mongols shirts). As shown by... Beginning with... Which created a need for... Which were... Why did the Industrial Revolution happen in Europe? (Since China India and Europe were all at around the same place as far as industrial production prior to this) Main Thesis: Solution 1 (the really Eurocentric one): Europeans are just better and smarter than other people, and that only Europe had the culture of science and invention that made the creation of these revolutionary technologies possible. Solution 2 (slightly less Eurocentric): Freer political institutions encouraged innovation and strong property rights created inventives for inventors. Solution 3 (the short one): Europe's small population required labor-saving inventions. The problem with all of these? They also apply to China, India, or both! It was not clear that Europe was going to become the worl'ds dominant manufacturing power in the next hundred years. So why was it Europe? Sub-Thesis #2: Europeans, specifically the British, had two huge advantages: coal and wages. The first advantage... Coal And the second advantage... Wages Sub-Sub-Thesis #1: The industrial revolution was all about using different forms of energy to automate production. Why coal? England had large supplies of coal near the surface, making it cheap to mine. And a cheap, accessible resource created a positive feedback loop, leading to a chain of innovations, such as... This one... Wages were higher in Britain than anywhere else mentioned in the video... And high wages combined with cheap fule costs meant it was economically efficient for manufactururs to look to machines as a way of lowering their production costs. Simply stated: People were the most expensive resource for business owners to maintain, so it made sense to replace them with machines. Plus, a big part of the Industrial Revolution was about making products with a high demand for cheap, to turn around and sell on European markets. And that just about sums up this episode of Crash Course: World History #32 in web format.